Tuesday, June 2, 2015

REVIEW - Bitter Sweet Love - R.C. Stephens


TITLE: Bitter Sweet Love (Twisted #1)

AUTHOR: R.C. Stephens

Synopsis:


After enduring an abusive childhood and having her heart broken by the only boy she trusts, Alexis White vows to never let anyone hurt her again. She's left her troubled past behind and starts a new life at college. For the past seven years, her social calendar has been filled with frat parties, drinking, and meaningless sexual hook-ups. Until one night she unexpectedly gets saved by a tall, dark, and handsome French foreigner, Luc Blanchard. He's charming, sophisticated, and very interested in Lexi, who has presented herself as a challenge when she tells him relationships aren't her thing.

She finds herself sucked in by his own intriguing past. But everything changes when Dylan Priestley, the gorgeous boy who broke her heart and shattered her faith in friendship and love, suddenly shows up in her life again while back home on a visit. Dylan doesn't hide his feelings for Lexi, but she can't forgive or forget being betrayed by the one person she ever truly loved.

Despite the pain Dylan's caused her, Lexi is once again drawn to the blue-eyed-boy-next-door. Will Lexi choose the man who seems perfect but hides a dark side or the boy who smashed her heart into pieces so many years ago?

Warning: This book ends in a cliffhanger. This is book one of a trilogy. Release dates will be held close together.

 MY THOUGHTS:


Bitter sweet is all about Lexi and how she's coping with life.
Lexi is a 24 year old college student who is known for being promiscuous.
She works in a bar and has sex with random men often, never opting for having a relationship or for bringing the man home. That is until she meets Luc.
Luc is a Frenchman who recently moved to Canada for the family business. He attends a party with his cousin and meets Lexi.
Lexi is fending off a previous sexual partner, as she does not want to have sex with him, but due to her reputation, he is having a hard time taking her “no” seriously.
Luc steps in and saves her, which leads to her having a conversation with him. When she tells him that she does not do relationships, he takes it as a challenge and pursues her anyway.
This budding relationship with Luc brings up many memories from her past, including Dylan the one man that she will always love, but also the one man that broke her heart.
Of course when she goes home for Thanksgiving holiday, she runs into Dylan which sets in motion a love triangle, as she feel she is not good enough for Dylan, while she does care for Luc.
This book ends on a cliffhanger after the big reveal about the secrets that Luc was keeping.
The last couple chapters of the book are graphic due to violence.

Overall, I thought this book was good and worth a read. I will be reading the second book, as well, to find out the conclusion to the story.
At first, I was having a hard time understanding and believing that Lexi was being so ridiculous. Some of the things she was saying was contradicting to previous comments she had made or thought, but when I realized how young she was and what she had to go through in the past, I realized many women probably do feel that way, when put in similar situations or at that age.
There is a lot of back story and time jumping in this book, but it is labeled accordingly and I feel like the time jumping was used properly and added to the story.
Readers will get a sense for who Lexi grew up to be, and who she has become due to her past and her low self-esteem.
With that being said, she is also stubborn and ruthless for the most part. I hope the author develops her character more and helps her realize her inner strength.

The reason I rated this book 4 stars instead of 5, is because I felt there was a lot of extra information included that fluffed the story up, and added nothing important to the story.
There were certain parts of the story where I was having a hard time staying interested due to all the extra information that I felt was not necessary.
But take the fluff away, and I feel like it is a very good story and I hope the second book continues to be just as good.



 *Received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

STAR RATING - 4 STARS



https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23277315-bitter-sweet-love?from_search=true&search_version=service_impr

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